Why I Like to use Spark 2 Mail as my Default Mail App on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone

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In this video, we’re going to look at why I like to use Spark as my default mail app on the Mac, iPad and iPhone. Spark is another email client just like the Mail app. But what it offers is a number of other features that the Mail app doesn’t have. This includes quick replies, email templates, and a Smart View for your mail. It’ll categorize your mail by newsletter or notifications. Now we’re going to look at this on the Mac, iPad and iPhone Spark is available on all three devices. And it is free to use for personal use, they make their money for enterprise. So if you have multiple people that want to connect up to a single email account as an example, but for personal use, you can use it for free. And a lot of the features or I should say most of the features that are available in Spark are available on all of the different devices.

So you can use Quick replies on the Mac, the iPad, the iPhone, you can use email templates on each one of those devices, you have that smart view that I mentioned, and each one of those devices. Let’s see why I like to use Spark as my default email client, we’re first going to go to my Mac. So I’m looking at Spark here. And if you look, you’re going to see that it has a similar look to mail. If we go over to the upper left hand corner, I can see all of my different email accounts. I have three different email accounts connected to spark, I can see my folders here, I can see all of my mail and a list. And then any email that I selected, I can read that email. Let’s take a look at the Smart View. First, this is one of my favorite features in what actually drew me over to spark, you’re going to see we have smart and classic up here. But what does this mean?

Well, with smart, what it’s going to do is it’s going to group my emails together based on what type of email it is. As an example, you can see that I have my notifications here. So all these emails, all 21 of these emails, if I click on this, I can see all of them, all 21 of them are going to be notifications. I want to see all of my newsletters, we get a ton of newsletters, right? Well, if we look you’re going to see I can see all of my newsletters. By default, it just shows the latest three, but I can view all nine of them. Below that I have my pins, I can pin my email. And then I can see my read email. If I were to receive an email from someone personal, let’s go ahead and mark this as unread. Watch what happens when I mark it as unread. I have another category here. So now what it’s going to do is it’s going to group all of my emails that are from people. So we can easily go through our emails when it’s categorized in the Smart View. Now, if you like the other view, or if you’re looking for a specific email, you can go to the classic view. This is how the Mail app is viewed. I click on it. And now it’s by time and date. Again, I like to keep it in Smart View. Let’s see what this looks like on the iPad and iPhone. On the iPad, we have our notifications in our different groupings up here. And if I want to take a look at it in the classic view, I can do that as well.

So we have the same views. I go over to my iPhone. And again, we can see that we have our smart view here. What else do we have? Well, I can quick reply. Let’s go over to an email here from someone. I’m going to go to Johnny Appleseed here. And let’s say I wanted to quick reply to him. Maybe I want to laugh at this or I agree with it, or I just want to like it. Well, I don’t want to type anything out. What would spark what we’re able to do is reply with a quick reply. When I click on this, I can send just a quick reply here. We have thanks, smile, great idea, call me, we can like it, we can agree with it, we can laugh at it and we can customize the smart replies. On the iPhone, I have the same thing. If I go over to a person, you do have to go over to a person who can’t use a quick reply with a newsletter. And when I go down to the three dots at the very bottom, we can see we have quick reply. And I can quick reply. I just tap on any one of these. So let’s go ahead and tap on it. And now just replied, on the Mac, we have the same thing you’re going to see I have my email here. And I have quick reply. I can also create email templates. I’m going to create a new email here, you’re going to see I have this icon. This is where I can go and add a template. Click on this and I can go and create new templates.

On the iPad and iPhone. It basically works the same way. I’m going to go to the iPad here we’re going to create a new email. And if we look up at the top we have our template And I can go and add a template. Same thing with the iPhone. Let’s go back, we’re going to create a new email here. And there are my templates. With Spark. We also have a built in calendar that works with Google Calendar and Apple’s calendar. Let’s go back over to my Mac. I’m looking at Spark here, you’re gonna see that I have calendar, I click on this. And now I’m able to check my schedule, as well as create new events. All I have to do is just click in here and I can create a new event.

And what it will do is it’ll sync with my calendar app on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone, or if I’m using Google Calendar, I can use that as well. Here I’m using Google Calendar, but I want to switch it over to my iCloud account, I can do that as well. And we have the calendar available on the iPad and iPhone, let’s go over to my iPad, we’re going to close a few of these windows here, you’re going to see in the upper left hand corner, I have a little calendar here, I tap on it, and I have my calendar. Same thing with the iPhone, we tap on the calendar in the upper right hand corner, you’re gonna see we have a little calendar here. When I tap on that I get my calendar. So we have easy access to our calendar right from within the spark app. Now one of the other features that drew me to it, let’s go back over to my Mac was we could snooze email as well as set a follow up notification. Let’s say that this email here, what I need to do is I need to reply to that like next week, I don’t want to have this in my inbox, I want to snooze it. So then it comes back to me next week. I’m not going to deal with this until next week. So all you have to do is just go over to the snooze button here. And from here, I’m able to set when I want it to come back into my inbox. So I could say I’m not going to deal with this until the weekend, all I have to do is go over to the weekend. And then it’ll disappear out of my inbox. Let’s go ahead and do that I can see it disappeared, I will be able to find it in snooze here. But now what will happen is this weekend, it’ll show back up in my inbox. So it’s a way of keeping your inbox clean. You can snooze emails that you’re not going to deal with right now and get them outside of your inbox. We can do the same thing on the iPad and iPhone.

If I go over to my iPad here, I’m going to open up an email, I want to snooze this, if we go to the lower right hand corner, we can see we have this little clock, I tap on it. And now I can set when I want to snooze it or when I want it to come back into my inbox. I can also even pick a date. And we can customize what is shown here. If you want to have a notification, you can set a notification, the iPhone has the same settings, tap on an email, I go to snooze. And then I can go and set when I want it to come back in my inbox, the Mail app is coming out with this in the fall of 2022. So this is not going to be anything that is exclusive to spark. But it is one of those things that drew me over to spark because they’ve had it for a couple of years now. follow up email is another feature that spark has that is coming out in the Mail app. Basically what this will do and this is coming out in the Mail app on the Mac as well or the Mail app on the Mac, iPad and iPhone. But with follow up emails, what we’re able to do is when we send an email to someone, if they don’t respond, if they don’t follow up, what it’ll do is it’ll come back into our inbox and we can send it again or send a new message. So it’s like a reminder, you need an answer from somebody, you may want to give them two or three days to respond. If they don’t respond within two or three days. What you can do is have the spark app remind you to email them again. So let’s go back over to my Mac and see how this works. I have some emails here, we’re going to go with Johnny, what I want to do is reply to him. And then I also want to set a follow up email or a follow up reminder. So I just go down to the bottom and you’re going to see this little icon here. When I click on this, I can set once I send it when this email will come back into my inbox. So let’s say if he doesn’t respond by next week, what I would like this email to do is come back into my inbox. So I just click on it.

And now what it’s going to do is remind me on July 31, if he doesn’t respond to this, and then we can also delay it. So what I’m able to do is say I want to send this tomorrow, I can send this later. So now I just go over to tomorrow. And now what’s going to happen here with this email is it’s going to schedule it To send tomorrow at 9am. And if Johnny doesn’t respond by July 31, it’s going to come back into my inbox. Pretty cool stuff on the iPad and the iPhone, we have those same features. Let’s go back over to my iPad here, and Johnny Appleseed, I’m going to reply. And then up at the top, what I’m able to do is set a reminder. I can say this weekend, and I can say I want to send this out tomorrow. And then when I click on Send, what it’s going to do is it’s going to send this email tomorrow morning. And then if Johnny doesn’t respond by the weekend, it’s going to come back into my inbox, I can do the same thing on the iPhone, let’s go and reply to an email here. Now, what I’m able to do is, so I’m going to go again with the weekend. And what I want to do is send this tomorrow morning. And now this email, when I send it, I tap on the envelope in the upper right hand corner.

When I send this email, what it’ll do is it’ll send it at nine o’clock tomorrow morning. And if Johnny doesn’t respond, I’ll have it back in my inbox, so then I can follow up with them. I’m going to show you one other feature, we can link this up with different services. What are services? Well, in this case, here, I’m going to link this up where I have it linked up with reminders. So instead of using that follow up, what we’re also able to do is send an email to our reminder app. And then we can keep it under reminder. So if you’re using reminders, you can integrate this with the spark app. Let’s see what I mean. We’re going to go back over to my Mac, I’m going to close this. And now what I want to do is add this email to my Reminders app. How do I do that? Well, all we have to do is just go up to our three dots here. And we have some more options here. One of them is services, what we can do is we can add a number of different services here, I have reminders added as a service. So now, when I go back up here, I can say add this to my reminders. I’m going to go with the link. So then when I click on it, it will open it up in Spark.

So I can view that email that original email. And then I can title the reminder, I can have it remind me I can select a date, I can even select what list this goes into. So I’m going to put this into my reminders list. So now all I have to do is just click on Save. And that email is now in my reminders, I’m going to archive this, we’re going to move it out of here. Once you archive, it puts it into a special folder. And that’s where basically all of your emails go. Let’s quit out of Spark here. And now what we’re going to do is open up the Reminders app. When I open up the Reminders app, what you’re going to see under reminders here is my reminder. And when I click on this, it’ll open it up in Spark, I’ll be able to see that original email. Now, when you quit out of Spark, it does take a little bit because it has to synchronize it, but eventually this will quit. And then it just quit there. And then all I have to do is just click on this. And we can see it opened it up in Spark. There’s that email. And again, we have those same features on the iPad and iPhone. If I wanted to add this Firebase email to my reminders, all I have to do is just go to the lower right hand corner, tap on the three dots. And then you’re going to see services, I click on Add service, we’re going to add my reminders here. This is how easy it is. Click on reminders.

And now all I have to do is click on Save. I’m going to go with a link. I click on save and it’ll add it to my reminders. Same thing with the iPhone. Again, all I do is tap on the three dots, you’re going to see add services. And you can add it to the Reminders app. Now in most cases, what will happen when you add a service or when you change any setting, it’ll sync across all your different devices. And my case here it didn’t do that because I kind of wanted to show you how it all worked. If I send an email from my Mac, it will also be sent or go over into the archive or sent email on my iPad and iPhone but I just kind of wanted to show you so I kind of cheated the system. I wanted to show you how it all worked on the three different devices. So those are some of the reasons why I love to use Spark as my default mail app. Now here’s the beauty of it all. You can use Spark and the Mail app at the same time. So I would say that I use the spark Mail App probably 95% of the time. But every once in a while, what I’ll need to do is open up a mail in the Mail app, let’s say I send out a newsletter, I want to see what it looks like on the Mail app, sometimes spark doesn’t render something properly, well, then what you’re able to do is just open up your mail app, and you can see all of your mail, they work side by side.

So you don’t have to give up one to go to the other. You can try spark out for a while. And if you don’t like it, you can go back to the Mail app. Or what you can do is just use the spark app or most everything like what I do, and then use Mail app for special occasions. Again, maybe it’s not rendering an email properly. So those are some of the reasons why I love to use the spark app. It is a free app. You can download it in the app store. You can get it on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone, and it works alongside of the Mail app on the Mac, iPad, and iPhone. So those are some of the reasons why I love to use Spark mail as my default mail application instead of Apple’s Mail App.